Wargaming madness in a world gone wrong.

Author: Kim Jong Phil

Two games of Dragon Rampant by Osprey Games! In a weird twist of fate they both happened to be the same scenario as well.

The 36 point retinue I used was based around Khorne Bloodbound figures from the Age of Sigmar starter by Games Workshop.

Lord Furiosa Vajazzle the Tumescent – Elite Foot with the special ability of Fear.

Two units of Blood Reavers – Bellicose Foot

Two units of Blood Warriors – Bellicose Foot with shiny armour

One Khogorath – Greater Warbeast with cunning.

It isn’t a subtle retinue and the small number of special rules means it really easy to use. It’s all basically point and charge.

The first game was against Finny’s Orcs. Old Games Workshop lead orcs. It didn’t go well for the forces of Khorne and he must have been displeased with the result. I spread out too much so my units couldn’t support each other which I later realised was the way to play with bellicose foot units. As a result of piece meal attacks on my part the orc boar boys and skirmish troops were able to break apart my units.

Lord Vajazzle and the Blood Reavers.Orc Boar and Wolf RidersThe KhorgorathBlood Reavers moving forwardLord Furiosa Vajazzle the Tumescent
The second game was against Ryan’s lovely Lord of the Rings figures. The majority of his force was mounted. And had ranged troops. So I was a in a similar situation as the previous game. However, I try and learn from my mistakes. The fight between the two army generals saw them mutually destroy each other. I managed to roll a double 1 which was the only thing I didn’t need for my general to run off! Ryan was also particularly unlucky when one of his units tried to evade my charging Blood Reavers but failed. The Blood Reavers wiped them out. Another unit did successfully evade but couldn’t outrun the Khorgorath who added their skulls to the Skull Throne. The game ended with me having one surviving unit of Blood Warriors left on the table and on their own they killed three enemy units.Blood Reavers advance through some bad going.Blood Warriors Charge ForwardRiders Of Rohan Skirt A Ruined TempleBlood Reavers Prepare to Charge CavalryThe Khorgorath Faces Down Riders of RohanBlood Warriors Try To Engage Skirmish TroopsThe Forces Of Khorne Press Forward Despite Casualties.The Khorograth SurroundedHeroes of Rohan Challenge Khorne!

Another three games are documented here for Battlefronts Team Yankee in 6mm. I’ve played a lot of it this year already and it doesn’t show any sign of slowing down. I’ve got US and Soviet forces and I’ve got friends with British and West German.

I’ve slowed down on the terrain making although I still think I need more hedges and walls. The hedges are made from green pan scouters stuck onto a wooden coffee stirrer and given a dry brush of green. The walls are thin strips of plastic are stuck onto wooden coffee stirrers although they are a bit lightweight so I’m rethinking how to do them. Fields are made from cork tiles covered in sand (for ploughed fields) and yellow flock (for wheat fields). The trees are made from balsa wood, clump foliage and cocktail sticks. I’ve acquired some buildings which need reprinting and such like so they are in the painting queue. Bizarrely I’ve only got 8 stands of US infantry to paint and I’m in no rush rush these as I don’t have the transport vehicles to put them in yet.

Game one was 75 points of US armoured combat team attacking a dug in Soviet Motor Rifle battalion in the No Retreat scenario. This was the first game I’d played at this size and the different in the larger unit sizes was noticeable. M1 platoons had more ‘punch’ but were still fragile one they start losing tanks. The scenario ended with the US armour reaching one of the objectives after clearing out the defending infantry and surrounding it. However, the remaining Soviet armour was able to knock the US tanks out.

US forces advance towards the Soviet lines

US M1 Abrams and M113 transports

Soviet infantry dug in and protecting the objective.

A ruined town in West Germany defended by Soviet Infantry with transports close by.

Ambush! T-72 tanks engage US forces in the flank.

Soviet Shilkas open fire on M113 transports while the M1 Abrams move towards the objective.

Game two saw the same forces (I didn’t have a lot of options at this point) in an Encounter scenario. The Soviet armour surged across the table and knocked out the M1 tank platoons by blowing them and the remainder ran off. We played it through though as we were still learning the rules and trying out artillery. We had time for a second game so we left the table as it was and ended up playing the No Retreat scenario. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures of this second game which was a shame as it was a much better game. The US defended and managed to hold off the attacking Soviets just because they defended in depth.

US lines on the right, Soviets on the left.A large formation of Soviet T-72s.US infantry and transports defend, unsuccessfully, the objectives.

Game three was – No Retreat! Again! However things had changed. I took a 100pt Soviet Tank Battalion against my mate Jason’s West Germans. This time we used aircraft for the first time. Specifically Hind helicopters. They flew on, fired some rockets which did nothing and then got shot down. Otherwise the Soviet armour, two companies of 8 T-72 tanks rolled over the brittle West Germans.

Soviet armour advances from left to right towards the thin West German lines.Soviet T-72 tanks advancingSoviet Hind helicopters and Carnation artillery.

This second game of Team Yankee used the same 50 point forces as before but we played the Dust Up scenario. Valuable lessons had been learnt from the previous game such as using more terrain to break up the large empty areas of the battlefield.

Some photos of my first game Team Yankee from Battlefront. Rather than play at the Battlefront scale of 15mm our club, The October Wargames Association are using 6mm figures. All the ones here are from Heroics and Ros. This first game was only 50 points as we wanted to get the basic rules sorted before moving onto a larger game. The scenarios was Encounter between a US Armoured Combat Team and a Soviet Motor Rifle Battalion.

The Soviet side of the battlefield.Soviet T-72 tanks move passed a crashed A-10 Thunderbolt.M1 Abrams cut through the thin armour of the Soviet BMP-2Soviet BMP-2s engage US M113s with their 30mm cannon.Soviet armour defend the objective from approaching US M1 Abrams.

Last year I had the crazy desire to play Dreadfleet by Games Workshop. I never played Man O’ War so didn’t have any preconceptions about Dreadfleet.

It is a game which is crazy. It’s a beer and crisps game rather than a tactical game and I have no problem with this. I think that many who bought Dreadfleet expected something like Man O’ War and because Games Workshop don’t advertise anything there were a lot of disappointed people when it was released.

Anyway, I picked up the game from eBay for about £50 and when it arrived I opened it and I was confronted with the vast number of plastic sprues. It was quite a daunting prospect to paint the whole lot and I knew it wasn’t going to be done quickly.

Fast forward to April 2016 and I finally finish painting everything. I won’t play a wargame with unpainted figures. So I was keen to play Dreadfleet after all this time. I also had a couple of mates willing to give it a go as well.

It was brilliant fun. We played through the first two scenarios from the rulebook and have decided to run them as the campaign. We are playing again next week so their will be more pictures to come. Here are a few from the first two games.

The DreadfleetThe Grand AlianceThe Heldenhammer prepares to turnThe Bloody Reaver and the Heldenhammer exchange broadsidesThe Bloody Reavers rams!The path of the Heldenhammer is blocked by two sea monsters.With the crew of the Swordfish trying to rescue their captain, the Heldenhammer defends it from the Bloody ReaverThe Curse of Zandri give The Heldenhammer a stern rake.

In December 2015 Opsrey Games released the latest in their little blue rule books. Dragon Rampant is a warband scale game by Daniel Mersey using the same rules as his Lion Rampant rules. I’m not going to go into the rules and how they work because I’m lazy and better people have written about them elsewhere on the Internets.

What occurred to me was that it was maybe possible to play Dragon Rampant using Games Workshops Epic figures, a range of figures of which I have quite a few. Over the years I have used them for two editions of Space Marine, Hordes of the Things and Future War Commander.

When looking at Grimdark Rampant what I wanted to do was to try and use my Epic range without having to make any changes to the rules of Dragon Rampant, except giving the Mixed Weapons ability to Heavy Foot for Devastator Space Marines. I’m all for fan made adaptations but sometimes the adaptations and extra rules are longer than the rules themselves. My philosophy, which I think came from playing a lot of Savage Worlds, to not try and replicate Space Marine or Warhammer 40,000 but just to capture the flavour.

The games we have played have all be 36 point games as this allows for 4-5 units a side and provides a good evenings game. We’ve also used the scenarios from Lion Rampant rather than the Dragon Rampant ones.

As for basing/ number of models, I’ve used whatever looks right. A group of three Stompas looks good for a unit, while one Gargant is enough. 12 stands of Eldar Guardians look quite impressive but for Space Marine Tactical units I just used three stands of marines and 3 Rhino transports. A unit of Land Raiders is just two models, a bike squadron is three stands. There are no hard or fast rules.

Below are some of the Epic unit types and their Dragon Rampant equivalent. They are based on the collections of figures I have so don’t include everything ever made or all of the 40K races. I’m not posting unit information because they are in the rulebook.